Pages

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Unnatural history

We have few pictures of these past few week's adventures, mainly because we have all been sick so much it's taken all of our energy just to get out of the house for basic errands like grocery shopping and getting gas. Today is the second Sunday we've missed, an unheard of total, more Sundays than I have ever missed except after childbirth and potentially once or twice when I was also very sick a long time ago.

BUT, we did manage to get to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History last week to see their current big exhibit, Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns and Mermaids. Now I thought it was strange that such an exhibit would be launched at a museum of natural HISTORY, as opposed to fantasy, but I guess they can approach the fantasy from the cultural/historical artifact perspective and it's still a legitimate use of the space. But I'm not in charge, so who cares what I think?

Besides, J is a bit obsessed with mythical creatures in general and dragons in specific, so this was the exhibit for us. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures in the exhibit itself, so you'll have to take our word for it when we say that the "life" sized dragon, kracken, pegasus, roc, and griffin were impressive. The exhibit also featured mythical creatures from around the world as depicted in textiles, artwork, and implements of war. J was most impressed, though a bit terrified of the kracken. He was also confused by it, since, in the books he has read, kracken are the size of islands and this one was, obviously, not, but I told him it was a baby kracken and he seemed mollified, though still a little scared. Actually, despite the huge creatures therein, the exhibit itself was rather small, though not if you're a four year old boy. There was an interesting interactive display on which you got to design your own dragon and then see it walking along on a screen in front of you but mostly the exhibit was the standard look and read variety, which meant it didn't take us long to make our way through.

After we had examined the exhibit fully, we headed over to some of the other areas in the museum, including their incongruous live animal exhibit. Here they are looking at a deer in his pen, climbing on the statue of a bear (no bears on display, thankfully), and climbing on another statue of a stegosaurus. You'll notice that J is wearing his dragon wing headband, a craft project we found down in the children's room in the basement, our second favorite place in the museum this time around. There were puzzles and books and activities to complement all the exhibits in the museum, so we spent quite a bit of time there enjoying ourselves thoroughly!

(It occurs to me looking at my photos of late that I need to get a new camera. Hmmm, I think I see my Christmas gift on the horizon!)